Justice Minister Paul Denis said they should be tried in Haiti despite the damage done to the country's judicial infrastructure and casualties among judges and court staff.

There have been suggestions the 10 could be tried in the US.

"It is Haitian law that has been violated, it is up to the Haitian authorities to hear and judge the case," he told AFP news agency.

"I don't see any reason why they should be tried in the United States."

The US ambassador to Haiti, Kenneth Merten, met with the group at police headquarters after the hearing.

"We'd like to assure they get treated according to the law, the Haitian law, and that they get treated fairly," he said.

A state department spokesman in Washington said the US was watching the case closely and would continue to offer assistance, through its consulate, to the group.

'Single village'

The children, who are from aged from two to 12, are now in the care of the Austrian-run SOS Children's Village in Port-au-Prince.

Twenty-one of the children are from a single village outside the capital and were handed over willingly by their parents, says the BBC's Paul Adams, in Port-au-Prince.

Residents in the village of Callebas told an Associated Press news agency reporter they had handed their children over through a local orphanage worker who said he was acting on the Americans' behalf.

The worker is said to have promised the families that the missionaries would educate their children in neighbouring Dominican Republic.

A number of parents in the badly-damaged village said they would find it difficult to provide for their children if they came back.

Ms Silsby has said her group had met a Haitian pastor by chance when they arrived last week, and that he had helped them gather the children. She also admitted that they did not have the proper paperwork.

"Our intent was to help only those children that needed us most, that had lost either both their mother and father, or had lost one of their parents and the other had abandoned them," she said from her jail cell on Wednesday.